back of her simple lower-class-gal dress, and contemplated the quirks of Fate.
For all the time she had spent in the theater, she had to admit that she had spent very little of that time in front of the stage. She had mostly stayed behind the curtains, fixing costumes, reassuring her father that he was the most amazing thing to hit the stage since Sir Laurence himself. That she should find herself standing in the cheap seats, in the original Globe, waiting for a production of Hamlet in which she knew the star . . . well, it was memorable. She might have to make a list.
First on that list would be waking up to find herself alone in bed with the bolster. She’d sat up quickly, fearing that she’d been left behind, only to find Derrick sitting in front of the fire. He’d been as motionless as a statue, staring out the window as if he contemplated dire things. She’d crawled out of bed—again being quite grateful they hadn’t had to come to Elizabethan England in the winter—and gone to kneel in front of him.
He’d studied her for so long that she wondered if he’d forgotten who she was. Then he’d simply smiled that charming, half-crooked smile she had come to love and leaned over and kissed her very softly.
She’d known he would survive.
She had called her maid to help her dress, then insisted that they leave Lord Derrick alone, no reasons given. She’d seen him fed, watered, then ferried off to the theater.
Second on her list would be cleaning up evidence of their stay with help from Granny Mary. She had given Lord Walter’s gift back to her great-aunt and asked that she find a particularly unique yet believable way to get them back to him. She had been given a rucksack of things Granny hadn’t let her sort through, things she was sure James MacLeod wouldn’t have approved of. But when it came to that feisty, amazing woman who was seventy-five years young, there was just no arguing with some things.
She’d rolled her dress up far enough to have it fit in Oliver’s pack and set off for the theater with Derrick’s lads in just ordinary middle-class women’s wear. Sir Thomas had been faintly horrified, but seemingly been willing to accept Mary’s excuse that Samantha just wanted to mingle with the common people whilst in London.
The lines to get into the Globe had been appallingly long, but she’d waited, then taken up her current spot at the back of the crowd. She supposed she would have been able to see more if they’d bought seats a level up instead of standing on the floor, but Oliver had insisted it was better where they were.
In case they needed to make a hasty getaway, of course.
If she were going to be honest with herself, that wasn’t what worried her. It was one thing for Derrick to have the guts to get up on stage. It was still that one thing for him to have the sheer audacity to get up on a stage that found itself in Elizabethan England.
But it was another thing entirely to hope he remembered lines from a play he’d auditioned for over a decade ago.
“Not to worry.”
She looked at Oliver who stood on her left. “Worry?” she said, her mouth horribly dry. “Why would I worry?”
Oliver smiled faintly. “He has a photographic memory. Leaves the rest of us at a disadvantage.”
Peter snorted. “And you can pick any lock ever created. Nothing is safe.”
Samantha looked at him and smiled. “And you could probably bring down the world’s banking system with a few clicks.”
“Well,” Peter said modestly, “probably.”
She took a deep breath, then took another handful of them. All right, if Derrick knew his lines, that was at least one thing she didn’t have to worry about. And she had read his college reviews. If he was only half as good presently as he had been in the past, well . . .
The guards suddenly took their place on stage and she realized the time for fretting was over.
The play was the thing.
She forced herself to remember not to lock her knees and made a conscious effort not to wring her hands. She thought perhaps she didn’t breathe at all during the scene with the guards and ghost, and she was certain she hadn’t swallowed as the bulk of the court took their place and Claudius started pontificating. She closed her eyes, because she just couldn’t watch.
“A little